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Mexican Human Rights Abuses Termed Persistent, Unpunished

November 17, 1995|By Gary Borg.

MEXICO CITY — Amnesty International has accused Mexico of decades of human rights violations that have worsened in the past year and a persistent failure to prosecute abuses. The Mexican government, though, charged that the report "exaggerates the facts."

The London-based human rights group said it found evidence that people are arrested without court orders, tortured in police custody and forced to sign confessions. In many cases, the confessions are the only evidence used against them in court, the group said in its report.

"Based on our investigations in the last year, we've been able to verify a growing number of . . . grave human rights violations, in particular extra-judicial executions . . . against members of the (political) opposition," Morris Tidball, an Amnesty International forensic expert said Wednesday at a news conference .

The report cites abuses by the federal army in the southern state of Chiapas in February against rebels of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, attacks against opposition political activists and human rights workers, and injustices against Indians and illegal immigrants and political violence in the southwestern state of Guerrero.

Mexico's Foreign Relations Ministry issued a statement saying that the report exaggerated violations but that the government was willing to investigate.